Instructions for Authors

ONLINE MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION:

An online submission and tracking service via internet facilitates a speedy and cost-effective submission of manuscripts. The full manuscript should be submitted online via Bentham's Content Management System (CMS) at bsp-cms.eurekaselect.com / View Submission Instructions

Manuscripts must be submitted by one of the authors of the manuscript, and should not be submitted by anyone on their behalf. The principal/corresponding author will be required to submit a Copyright Letter along with the manuscript, on behalf of all the co-authors (if any) to confirm that the manuscript (or any part of it) has not been published previously or is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Furthermore, any illustration, structure or table that has been published elsewhere must be reported, and copyright permission for reproduction must be obtained. The figures from patent documents are freely available on the databases and may not require any permission unless stated otherwise.

For all online submissions, please provide soft copies of all the materials (main text in MS Word or Tex/LaTeX), figures/illustrations in TIFF, PDF or JPEG, and chemical structures drawn in ChemDraw (CDX)/ISISDraw (TGF) as separate files, while a PDF version of the entire manuscript must also be included, embedded with all the figures/illustrations/tables/chemical structures etc. It is advisable that the document files related to a manuscript submission should always have the name of the corresponding author as part of the file name, i.e., Cilli MS text.doc”, “Cilli MS Figure 1” etc.

It is imperative that before submission, the author(s) should carefully proofread the files for special characters, mathematical symbols, Greek letters, equations, tables, references and images to ensure that they appear in proper format.

References, figures, tables, chemical structures, etc. should be referred to in the text at the appropriate places where they have been first discussed. Figure legends/captions should also be provided.

A successful electronic submission of the manuscript will be confirmed by a system-generated email acknowledgement to the principal/corresponding author immediately. Any queries therein should be addressed to info@benthamscience.org.

Copyright Letter:

It is mandatory to submit a signed copyright letter along with the manuscript, by the author to whom correspondence is to be addressed, delineating the scope of the submitted article declaring the potential competing interests, acknowledging contributions from authors and funding agencies, and certifying that the paper is prepared according to the 'Instructions for Authors'. All inconsistencies in the text and in the reference section and any typographical errors must be carefully checked and corrected before the submission of the manuscript. The article should not contain any material or information that may be unlawful, defamatory, fabricated, plagiarized, or which would, if published, in any way whatsoever, violate the terms and conditions as laid down in the copyright agreement. The authors should acknowledge that the publishers have the legal right to take appropriate action against the authors for any such violation of the terms and conditions as laid down in the copyright agreement. Download the Copyright letter

MANUSCRIPTS PUBLISHED:

The journal publishes mini and full length review and research articles written in English. Single Topic/Thematic Issues edited by invited Guest Editors are also considered for publication as are single review articles on recent patents of significant importance to the field.

As a service to authors publishing in Recent Advances in Communication and Network Technology, all articles will be published as open access via the journal's website until the end of 2015.

Single Topic Issues:

These special issues are peer-reviewed and may contain invited or uninvited review/mini-review articles or a mixture of research articles and reviews/ mini-reviews. A Single Topic Issue Editor will offer a short perspective and co-ordinate the solicitation of manuscripts between 3-5 (for a mini- Thematic Issue) to 6-10 (for full-length Thematic Issue) from leading scientists. Authors interested in editing a single topic issue in an emerging topic of outstanding developments in Telecommunications, may submit their proposal to the Editor-in-Chief at racnt@benthamscience.org for consideration.

Conference Proceedings:

MANUSCRIPT LENGTH:

Review Articles:

The total number of words for a published comprehensive review article is from 8000 to 40000 words, and for mini-review articles from 3000 to 6000 words excluding figures, structures, photographs, schemes, tables etc.

Research Articles:

Research articles should be 4000-8000 words excluding figures, structures, photographs, schemes, tables etc. There is a quota of 20% of published Research articles per issue in this journal.

There is no restriction on the number of figures, tables or additional files e.g. video clips, animation and datasets, that can be included with each article online. Authors should include all relevant supporting data with each article (Refer to Supplementary Material section).

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION:

The manuscript should be written in English in a clear, direct and active style. All pages must be numbered sequentially, facilitating in the reviewing and editing of the manuscript.

MICROSOFT WORD TEMPLATE:

It is advisable that authors prepare their manuscript using the template available on the Web, which will assist in preparation of the manuscript according to Journal’s Format. Download the Template.

Our contracted service provider Eureka Science can, if needed, provide professional assistance to authors for the improvement of English language and figures in manuscripts.

MANUSCRIPT SECTIONS FOR PAPERS:

Manuscripts submitted for research and review articles in the respective journal should be divided into the following sections:

1. Title:

The title of the article should be precise and brief and must not be more than 120 characters. Authors should avoid the use of non-standard abbreviations. The title must be written in title case except for articles, conjunctions and prepositions.

2. Short Running Title:

Authors must provide a short ‘running title’ of their manuscript.

3. Authors’ Names and Affiliations

The names of the authors should be provided according to previous citations or as the authors would want them to be published along with the institutional affiliations and current address, telephone, cell & fax numbers and the email address must be provided, with an asterisk in front of the name of the principal author. The corresponding author should also be designated and the full address, telephone, cell & fax numbers and the email address must be stated to receive correspondence and galley proofs.

4. Structured Abstract:

The abstract of an article should be its clear, concise and accurate summary, having no more than 250 words, and including the explicit sub-headings (as in-line or run-in headings in bold). Use of abbreviations should be avoided and the references should not be cited in the abstract. Ideally, each abstract should include the following sub-headings, but these may vary according to requirements of the article.

Background

Objective

Method

Results

Conclusion

5. Graphical Abstract:

A graphic must be included with each manuscript for use in the Table of Contents (TOC). This must be submitted separately as an electronic file (preferred file types are EPS, PDF, TIFF, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and CDX etc.). A graphical abstract, not exceeding 30 words along with the illustration, helps to summarize the contents of the manuscript in a concise pictorial form. It is meant as an aid for the rapid viewing of the journals' contents and to help capture the readers’ attention. The graphical abstract may feature a key structure, reaction, equation, etc. that the manuscript elucidates upon. It will be listed along with the manuscript title, authors’ names and affiliations in the contents page, typeset within an area of 5 cm by 17 cm, but it will not appear in the article's PDF file or in print.

Graphical Abstracts should be submitted as a separate file (must clearly mention graphical abstract within the file) online via Bentham's Content Management System by selecting the option “Supplementary material”.

6. Keywords:

6 to 8 keywords must be provided.

7. Text Organization:

The main text should begin on a separate page and should be divided into Title page, Abstract and the main text. The text may be subdivided further according to the areas to be discussed, which should be followed by the List of Abbreviations, Conflict of Interest, Acknowledgement and Reference sections. For Research Articles the manuscript should begin with the Title page and Abstract followed by the main text, which must be structured into separate sections as Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion, List of Abbreviations, Conflict of Interest, Acknowledgements and References. For Review, the manuscript should be divided into title page, abstract and the main text. The text may be subdivided further according to the areas to be discussed, which should be followed by the Acknowledgement and Reference sections. The review article should mention any previous important reviews in the field and contain a comprehensive discussion starting with the general background of the field. It should then go on to discuss the salient features of recent developments. The authors should avoid presenting material which has already been published in a previous review.

The authors are advised to present and discuss their observations in brief.

The manuscript style must be uniform throughout the text and 10pt Times New Roman fonts should be used. The full term for an abbreviation should precede its first appearance in the text unless it is a standard unit of measurement. Italics should be used for Binomial names of organisms (Genus and Species), for emphasis and for unfamiliar words or phrases. Non-assimilated words from Latin or other languages should also be italicized e.g. per se, et al., in vitro, in vivo, in situ, etc.

For Research Articles, the manuscript should begin with the title page and abstract followed by the main text, which must be structured into separate sections as Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, Current & Future Developments, Conflict of Interest, Acknowledgements and References. The patent registration number and patent authority of the author's intellectual property must be cited in the article.

INTRODUCTION:

The Introduction section should include the background and aims of the research in a comprehensive manner.

Section Headings:

Section headings should be numbered sequentially, left aligned and have the first letter capitalized, starting with the introduction. Sub-section headings however, should be in lower-case and italicized with their initials capitalized. They should be numbered as 1.1, 1.2, etc. A page break may be inserted to keep a heading along with its text.

MATERIALS AND METHODS:

This section provides details of the methodology used along with information on any previous efforts with corresponding references. Any details for further modifications and research should be included.

EXPERIMENTAL:

Repeated information should not be reported in the text of an article. A calculation section must include experimental data, facts and practical development from a theoretical perspective.

RESULTS:

Results should be precise.

DISCUSSION:

This should explore the significance of the results of the work, and present reproducible procedure. Extensive citations and discussion of published literature should be avoided.

The Results and discussions may be presented individually or combined in a single section with short and informative headings.

Patent Review Coverage:

Authors should review the most recent and important patents based on the topic covered. Coverage of novel inventions, methods, techniques and designs in all areas of telecommunications should be emphasized, including the significance of the reported patents.

Current & Future Developments:

The review/research article should conclude with a short section called “Current & Future Developments”. The author(s) will give their opinion on the current and future important developments on the topic discussed in their article.

Symbols and Units:

Greek symbols and special characters often undergo formatting changes and get corrupted or lost during preparation of a manuscript for publication. To ensure that all special characters used are embedded in the text, these special characters should be inserted as a symbol but should not be a result of any format styling (Symbol font face) otherwise they will be lost during the conversion to PDF/XML.

Authors are encouraged to consult reporting guidelines. These guidelines provide a set of recommendations comprising a list of items relevant to their specific research design.

Only ISO symbols, written in italic, should be used for the various parameters. All kinds of measurements should be reported only in International System of Units (SI). SI units should always be written in Roman and separated from the numerical value by a space (whatever the language).

The µ in µg or µm should be in Roman. The symbol for litre is L and that for minute is min. For temperature, please use only one of °C, °F or K in the entire manuscript. As the Angström (1Å = 10-10m) is not an SI unit, it should be replaced by the nanometre (1nm = 10-9 m) or by the picometer (1pm = 10-12 m): 1Å = 0.1nm = 100 pm. Multiple units should be written with negative superscripts (for example, 25mgµL-1 µs-1). The list of notations should appear just before the first paragraph of full text.

A list of symbols and units should be provided if used extensively throughout the text.

8. Conclusion:

A small paragraph summarizing the contents of the article, presenting the final outcome of the research or proposing further study on the subject, may be given at the end of the article under the Conclusion section.

9. List of Abbreviations (If Any):

If abbreviations are used in the text either they should be defined in the text where first used, or a list of abbreviations can be provided.

10. Consent for Publication:

If the manuscript has an individuals’ data, such as personal detail, audio-video material etc., consent should be obtained from that individual. In case of children, consent should be obtained from the parent or the legal guardian.

All such case reports should be followed by a proper consent prior to publishing.

11. Acknowledgements:

All individuals listed as authors must have contributed substantially to the design, performance, analysis, or reporting of the work and are required to indicate their specific contribution. Anyone (individual/company/institution) who has substantially contributed to the study for important intellectual content, or who was involved in the article’s drafting the manuscript or revising must also be acknowledged.

Guest or honorary authorship based solely on position (e.g. research supervisor, departmental head) is discouraged.

12. Conflict of Interest:

Financial contributions and any potential conflict of interest must be clearly acknowledged under the heading ‘Conflict of Interest’. Authors must list the source(s) of funding for the study. This should be done for each author.

13. References:

References must be listed in IEEE style only. All references should be numbered sequentially [in square brackets] in the text and listed in the same numerical order in the reference section. The reference numbers must be finalized and the bibliography must be fully formatted before submission. The author will be responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the references.

See below few examples of references listed in the correct IEEE style:

Edited Book:

[4]
D. Sarunyagate, Ed., Lasers. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996.

Conference Proceedings:

[5]
N. Osifchin, and G. Vau, “Power considerations for the modernization of telecommunications in Central and Eastern European and former Soviet Union (CCE/FSU) countries”, In Second International Telecommunication Energy Special Conference Special Conference, Budapest, Hungary,1997, pp. 9-16.

[10]
Citations for articles/material published exclusively online or in open access (free-to-view), must contain the accurate Web addresses (URLs) at the end of the reference(s), except those posted on an author’s Web site (unless editorially essential), e.g. ‘Reference: Available from: URL’.

Some important points to remember:

All references must be complete and accurate.

Online citations should include the date of access.

Journal titles should conform to the IEEE Transactions, Journals and Letters abbreviations.

All authors of referenced papers must be cited and there must be no use of the short hand version of et al.

Take special care of the punctuation convention as described in the above-mentioned examples.

Avoid using superscript in the in-text citations and reference section.

Abstracts, unpublished data and personal communications (which can only be included if prior permission has been obtained) should not be given in the reference section but they may be mentioned in the text and details provided as footnotes.

The authors are encouraged to use a recent version of EndNote (version 5 and above) or Reference Manager (version 10) when formatting their reference list, as this allows references to be automatically extracted.

14. Tables (if any):

Data Tables should be submitted in Microsoft Word table format.

Each table should include a title/caption being explanatory in itself with respect to the details discussed in the table. Detailed legends may then follow.

Table number in bold font i.e. Table 1, should follow a title. The title should be in small case with the first letter in caps. A full stop should be placed at the end of the title.

Tables should be embedded in the text exactly according to their appropriate placement in the submitted manuscript.

Columns and rows of data should be made visibly distinct by ensuring that the borders of each cell are displayed as black lines.

Tables should be numbered in Arabic numerals sequentially in order of their citation in the body of the text.

If a reference is cited in both the table and text, please insert a lettered footnote in the table to refer to the numbered reference in the text.

Tabular data provided as additional files can be submitted as an Excel spreadsheet.

15. Figures/Illustrations (if any):

All authors must strictly follow the guidelines below for preparing illustrations for publication in Recent Advances in Communications and Networking Technology. If the figures are found to be sub-standard, then the manuscripts will be rejected and the authors offered the option of figure improvement professionally by Eureka Science. The costs for such improvement will be charged to the authors.

Illustrations should be provided as separate files, embedded in the text file, and must be numbered consecutively in the order of their appearance. Each figure should include only a single illustration which should be cropped to minimize the amount of space occupied by the illustration.

If a figure is in separate parts, all parts of the 369+figure must be provided in a single composite illustration file.

Photographs should be provided with a scale bar if appropriate, as well as high-resolution component files.

Scaling/Resolution:

Line Art image type is normally an image based on lines and text. It does not contain tonal or shaded areas. The preferred file format should be TIFF or EPS, with the color mode being Monochrome 1-bit or RGB, in a resolution of 900-1200 dpi.

Halftone image type is a continuous tone photograph containing no text. It should have the preferred file format TIFF, with color mode being RGB or Grayscale, in a resolution of 300 dpi.

Combination image type is an image containing halftone, text or line art elements. It should have the preferred file format TIFF, with color mode being RGB or Grayscale, in a resolution of 500-900 dpi.

Formats:

Illustrations may be submitted in the following file formats:

Illustrator

EPS (preferred format for diagrams)

PDF (also especially suitable for diagrams)

PNG (preferred format for photos or images)

Microsoft Word (version 5 and above; figures must be a single page)

PowerPoint (figures must be a single page)

TIFF

JPEG (conversion should be done using the original file)

BMP

CDX (ChemDraw)

TGF (ISISDraw)

Bentham Science does not process figures submitted in GIF format.

For TIFF or EPS figures with considerably large file size restricting the file size in online submissions is advisable. Authors may therefore convert to JPEG format before submission as this results in significantly reduced file size and upload time, while retaining acceptable quality. JPEG is a ‘lossy’ format, however. In order to maintain acceptable image quality, it is recommended that JPEG files are saved at High or Maximum quality.

Zipit or Stuffit tools should not be used to compress files prior to submission as the resulting compression through these tools is always negligible.

Optimized files optimized for screen use (like GIF, BMP, PICT, WPG) because of the low resolution.

Files with too low a resolution.

Graphics that are disproportionately large for the content.

Image Conversion Tools:

There are many software packages, many of them freeware or shareware, capable of converting to and from different graphics formats, including PNG.

General tools for image conversion include Graphic Converter on the Macintosh, Paint Shop Pro, for Windows, and ImageMagick, available on Macintosh, Windows and UNIX platforms.

Bitmap images (e.g. screenshots) should not be converted to EPS as they result in a much larger file size than the equivalent JPEG, TIFF, PNG or BMP, and poor quality. EPS should only be used for images produced by vector-drawing applications such as Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw. Most vector-drawing applications can be saved in, or exported as, EPS format. If the images were originally prepared in an Office application, such as Word or PowerPoint, original Office files should be directly uploaded to the site, instead of being converted to JPEG or another format of low quality.

Color Figures/Illustrations:

The cost for color figures/plates/illustrations is US$ 490 per article for up to 3 colour pages and subsequently US$ 195.00 per page for any additional colour pages.

Color figures should be supplied in CMYK and not in RGB colors.

Note for authors: To maintain publication quality, figures submitted in colour will be published in colour only.

Chemical Structures:

Chemical structures MUST be prepared in ChemDraw/CDX and provided as separate file.

Structure Drawing Preferences:

[As according to the ACS style sheet]

Drawing Settings:

Chain angle

120°

Bond spacing

18% of width

Fixed length

14.4 pt (0.500cm, 0.2in)

Bold width

2.0 pt (0.071cm, 0.0278in)

Line width

0.6 pt (0.021cm, 0.0084in)

Margin width

1.6 pt (0.096cm)

Hash spacing

2.5 pt (0.088cm, 0.0347in)

Text settings:

Font

Times New Roman

Size

8 pt

Under the Preference Choose:

Units

points

Tolerances

3 pixels

Under Page Setup Use:

Paper

US letter

Scale

100%

16. Supportive/Supplementary Material:

We do encourage to append supportive material, for example a PowerPoint file containing a talk about the study, a PowerPoint file containing additional screenshots, a Word, RTF, or PDF document showing the original instrument(s) used, a video, or the original data (SAS/SPSS files, Excel files, Access Db files etc.) provided it is inevitable or endorsed by the journal's Editor.

Supportive/Supplementary Material intended for publication must be numbered and referred to in the manuscript but should not be a part of the submitted paper. In-text citations as well as a section with the heading "Supportive/Supplementary Material" before the "References" section should be provided. Here, list all Supportive/Supplementary Material and include a brief caption line for each file describing its contents.

Any additional files will be linked to the final published article in the form supplied by the author, but will not be displayed within the paper. They will be made available in exactly the same form as originally provided only on our website. Please also make sure that each additional file is a single table, figure or movie (please do not upload linked worksheets or PDF files larger than one sheet). Supportive/ Supplementary material must be provided in a single zipped file not larger than 4 MB.

Authors must clearly indicate if these files are not for publication but meant for the reviewers'/editors' perusal only.

PERMISSION FOR REPRODUCTION:

The Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink® service makes it faster and easier to secure permission from Bentham Science’s journal titles. Simply visit Journals by Title and locate the desired content. Then go to the article’s abstract and click on “Rights and Permissions” to open the RightsLink’s page. If you are unable to locate the content you wish to use or you are unable to secure the rights you are seeking, please e-mail us at permissions@benthamscience.org

Published/reproduced material should not be included unless written permission has been obtained from the copyright holder, which should be forwarded to the Editorial Office in case of acceptance of the article for publication.

REVIEWING AND PROMPTNESS OF PUBLICATION:

All papers submitted for publication are immediately subjected to editorial scrutiny, usually in consultation with members of the journal Editorial Advisory Board and outside independent reviewers. Every effort will be made to peer review submitted papers quickly. Papers which are delayed by authors in revision for more than 30 days will have to be re-submitted as a new submission. Papers accepted for publication are typeset and proofs are dispatched to authors for any corrections prior to final publication.

QUICK TRACK PUBLICATION:

For this journal an optional fast publication fee-based service called QUICK TRACK is available to authors for their submitted manuscripts.

QUICK TRACK allows online publication within 2 weeks of receipt of the final approved galley proofs from the authors. Similarly the manuscript can be published in the next forthcoming PRINT issue of the journal. The total publication time, from date of first receipt of manuscript to its online publication is 12 weeks, subject to its acceptance by the referees and modification (if any) by the authors within one week.

Authors who have availed QUICK TRACK services in a BSP journal will be entitled for an exclusive 30% discount if they again wish to avail the same services in any Bentham journal.

PAGE CHARGES:

No page charges will be levied to authors for the publication of their article.

LANGUAGE AND EDITING:

Manuscripts submitted containing language inconsistencies will not be published. Authors must seek professional assistance for correction of grammatical, scientific and typographical errors. Professional team available at Eureka Science may assist you in the English language editing of your article. Please contact Eureka Science for a language editing quote at e-mail: info@eureka-science.com stating the total number of words of the article to be edited.

PROOFS:

Authors will receive page proofs of their accepted paper before publications. To avoid delays in publication, proofs should be checked immediately for typographical errors and returned within 48 hours. Major changes are not acceptable at the proof stage. If unable to send corrections within 48 hours due to some reason, the author(s) must at least send an acknowledgement on receiving the galley proofs or the article will be published exactly as received and the publishers will not be responsible for any error occurring in the published manuscript in this regard.

The corresponding author will be solely responsible for ensuring that the revised version of the manuscript incorporating all the submitted corrections receives the approval of all the co-authors of the manuscript.

REPRINTS:

Printed reprints and e-prints may be ordered from the Publisher prior to publication of the article. First named authors may also order a personal online subscription of the journal at 50% off the normal subscription rate by contacting the subscription department at e-mail: subscriptions@benthamscience.org.

OPEN ACCESS PLUS:

Bentham Science also offers authors the choice of “Open Access Plus” publication of articles at a fee of US$ 900 per article. This paid service allows for articles to be disseminated to a much wider audience, on the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). Authors are asked to indicate whether or not they wish to pay to have their article made more widely available on this “Open Access Plus” basis. Where an author does not opt-in to this paid service, then the author’s article will be published only on Bentham Science’s standard subscription-based access, at no additional cost to the author.

Authors who select the “Quick Track” publication option (see below) and also wish to have their article made available on an “Open Access Plus” basis will be entitled to a 50% discount on the “Open Access Plus” publication fee.

COPYRIGHT:

Authors who publish in Bentham Science Journals will transfer copyright to their work to Bentham Science Publishers. Submission of a manuscript to the respective journals implies that all authors have read and agreed to the content of the Copyright Letter or the Terms and Conditions. It is a condition of publication that manuscripts submitted to this journal have not been published and will not be simultaneously submitted or published elsewhere. Plagiarism is strictly forbidden, and by submitting the article for publication the authors agree that the publishers have the legal right to take appropriate action against the authors, if plagiarism or fabricated information is discovered. By submitting a manuscript the authors agree that the copyright of their article is transferred to the publishers if and when the article is accepted for publication. Once submitted to the journal, the author will not withdraw their manuscript at any stage prior to publication.

SELF-ARCHIVING

By signing the Copyright Letter the authors retain the rights of self-archiving. Following are the important features of self-archiving policy of Bentham Science journals:

Authors can deposit the first draft of a submitted article on their personal websites, their institution’s repositories or any non-commercial repository for personal use, internal institutional use or for permitted scholarly posting.

Authors may deposit the ACCEPTED VERSION of the peer-reviewed article on their personal websites, their institution’s repository or any non-commercial repository such as PMC, arXiv after 12 MONTHS of publication on the journal website. In addition, an acknowledgement must be given to the original source of publication and a link should be inserted to the published article on the journal's/publisher’s website.

If the research is funded by NIH, Wellcome Trust or any other Open Access Mandate, authors are allowed the archiving of published version of manuscripts in an institutional repository after the mandatory embargo period. Authors should first contact the Editorial Office of the journal for information about depositing a copy of the manuscript to a repository. Consistent with the copyright agreement, Bentham Science does not allow archiving of FINAL PUBLISHED VERSION of manuscripts.

The link to the original source of publication should be provided by inserting the DOI number of the article in the following sentence: “The published manuscript is available at EurekaSelect via http://www.eurekaselect.com/openurl/content.php?genre=article&doi= [insert DOI]

There is no embargo on the archiving of articles published under the OPEN ACCESS PLUS category. Authors are allowed deposition of such articles on institutional, non-commercial repositories and personal websites immediately after publication on the journal website.

PLAGIARISM PREVENTION:

Bentham Science Publishers uses the iThenticate software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. iThenticate software checks content against a database of periodicals, the Internet, and a comprehensive article database. It generates a similarity report, highlighting the percentage overlap between the uploaded article and the published material. Any instance of content overlap is further scrutinized for suspected plagiarism according to the publisher’s Editorial Policies. Bentham Science allows an overall similarity of 20% for a manuscript to be considered for publication. The similarity percentage is further checked keeping the following important points in view:

Low Text Similarity:

The text of every submitted manuscript is checked using the Content Tracking mode in iThenticate. The Content Tracking mode ensures that manuscripts with an overall low percentage similarity (but which may have a higher similarity from a single source) are not overlooked. The acceptable limit for similarity of text from a single source is 5%. If the similarity level is above 5%, the manuscript is returned to the author for paraphrasing the text and citing the original source of the copied material.

It is important to mention that the text taken from different sources with an overall low similarity percentage will be considered as a plagiarized content if the majority of the article is a combination of copied material.

High Text Similarity:

There may be some manuscripts with an overall low similarity percentage, but a higher percentage from a single source. A manuscript may have less than 20% overall similarity but there may be 15 % similar text taken from a single article. The similarity index in such cases is higher than the approved limit for a single source. Authors are advised to thoroughly rephrase the similar text and properly cite the original source to avoid plagiarism and copyright violation.

Types of Plagiarism:

We all know that scholarly manuscripts are written after thorough review of previously published articles. It is therefore not easy to draw a clear boundary between legitimate representation and plagiarism. However, the following important features can assist in identifying different kinds of plagiarized content. These are:

Reproduction of others words, sentences, ideas or findings as one’s own without proper acknowledgement.

Text recycling, also known as self-plagiarism. It is an author’s use of a previous publication in another paper without proper citation and acknowledgement of the original source.

Paraphrasing poorly: Copying complete paragraphs and modifying a few words without changing the structure of original sentences or changing the sentence structure but not the words.

Verbatim copying of text without putting quotation marks and not acknowledging the work of the original author.

Properly citing a work but poorly paraphrasing the original text is considered as unintentional plagiarism. Similarly, manuscripts with language somewhere between paraphrasing and quoting are not acceptable. Authors should either paraphrase properly or quote and in both cases, cite the original source.

Higher similarity in the abstract, introduction, materials and methods, and discussion and conclusion sections indicates that the manuscript may contain plagiarized text. Authors can easily explain these parts of the manuscript in many ways. However, technical terms and sometimes standard procedures cannot be rephrased; therefore Editors must review these sections carefully before making a decision.

Plagiarism in Published Manuscripts:

Published manuscripts which are found to contain plagiarized text are retracted from the journal website after careful investigation and approval by the Editor-in-Chief of the journal. A ‘Retraction Note’ as well as a link to the original article is published on the electronic version of the plagiarized manuscript and an addendum with retraction notification in the journal concerned.

E-PUB AHEAD OF SCHEDULE:

Bentham Science Publishers are pleased to offer electronic publication of accepted papers prior to scheduled publication. These peer-reviewed papers can be cited using the date of access and the unique DOI number. Any final changes in manuscripts will be made at the time of print publication and will be reflected in the final electronic version of the issue. Articles ahead of schedule may be ordered by pay-per-view at the relevant links by each article stated via the E-Pub Ahead of Schedule

Disclaimer:

Articles appearing in E-Pub Ahead-of-Schedule sections have been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in this journal and posted online before scheduled publication. Articles appearing here may contain statements, opinions, and information that have errors in facts, figures, or interpretation. Accordingly, Bentham Science Publishers, the editors and authors and their respective employees are not responsible or liable for the use of any such inaccurate or misleading data, opinion or information contained of articles in the E-Pub Ahead-of-Schedule.